When will we get some sense?

Aug 24, 2020 Features / Columnists, Front Page Comment, News

The Sunday edition of the country’s newspapers carried headlines of the former Coalition government spending G$50M or US$250,000 on legal challenges to the no-confidence motion and elections. These news reports have gone viral and are exciting public interest.
This preoccupation by the government reflects its small-mindedness. Instead of focusing on the billions of United States dollars which companies like ExxonMobil are gouging from our pockets, the government is obsessed instead with scoring political points over a quarter of a million United States dollars.
We are not saying that the issue of alleged abuse of State resources is not important or should be ignored. We are saying that the government needs to be paying greater attention to the larger issues and more vital concerns.
Our silly leaders are focusing on the small “potatoes” while the big “yams” are escaping their attention. They have to stop thinking small and being petty-minded. They must think and act big in relation to our resources, especially our massive oil wealth.
Their concern must be to derive big benefits for the rights to our oil rather than fighting over small pennies. As a nation, we must think big, since our oil holdings are huge. When we quarrel and haggle endlessly about legal fees, we are viewed by companies, such as Exxon as a backward Third World country, liable to be entrapped and conned of our wealth.
When we bicker over $50M of the taxpayers’ money spent on legal fees, we lose sight of the bigger picture. Unless we change our mindset, and change it immediately, we and our children and their children will remain poor for all eternity.
It is time for the government to cease being petty and instead concentrate on stopping the continued bleeding of our wealth at the hands of the oil companies.
Wake up Guyana!

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